The Legislative Assembly’s (AL) Follow-up Committee for Public Administration Affairs has quoted the government as saying that insufficient skills, knowledge, and language proficiency have been the top three reasons for local jobseekers’ failure to get matched with the positions and jobs that they want offered by employers.
Lawmakers Zheng Anting and Lei Chan U, the committee’s president and secretary respectively, briefed reporters after the committee held a meeting on Friday where several officials from the Labour Affairs Bureau (DSAL), the Education and Youth Development Bureau (DSEDJ), and the Talent Development Committee briefed the committee about the government’s measures promoting local residents’ employment, occupational training and career development as well as its current policies concerning the hiring of non-resident workers.
The two legislators quoted the officials as saying that in the first six months of this year, the government successfully helped 5,224 local residents secure a job in its job-matching measures in collaboration with employers, comprising 2,749 with a higher education degree and 2,475 school graduates.
According to the two lawmakers, the officials said during the meeting that in the first six months of this year, there were various reasons for local jobseekers to have failed to secure employment in the government’s job-matching initiatives carried out in collaboration with employers, with the top three reasons being jobseekers’ skills not meeting employers’ needs, jobseekers’ knowledge mismatched with employers’ demands, and insufficient language proficiency, accounting for 56 percent, 20 percent, and seven percent of the total respectively.
Both lawmakers quoted the officials as saying that the government will provide intensive job interview training sessions, lasting between half a day and two days, for local jobseekers who have failed to land a job after an interview with employers, aiming to improve their interview skills.
Legislator Zheng Anting (left), who chairs the legislature’s Follow-up Committee for Public Administration Affairs, and lawmaker Lei Chan U, the committee’s secretary, look on during Friday’s press briefing. – Photo courtesy of TDM
